News Staff

Contact Michigan IT News staff at umit-cio-newsletter@umich.edu.

Author Archives: News Staff

Michigan Medicine launches Fluency Direct speech recognition technology

By | January 7, 2021
0 Comment
Fluency Direct logo

Beginning this month, Michigan Medicine will launch a speech recognition technology called Fluency Direct. Michigan Medicine is retiring Dragon services effective Feb. 3 and Phone Transcription services effective Feb. 15. “Michigan Medicine has seen a steady decline in phone transcription users, but still incurs substantial per-line transcription costs and fixed vendor costs,” said Jeff Terrell, professor of otolaryngology.… Read More »

Managing your digital life

By | January 4, 2021
0 Comment
laptop, camera, tablet, iphone, pen and notepads arranged on tabletop

“Digital archiving” might sound like something best left to trained professionals, but with so much of our lives online — photos, videos, financial records, audio recordings, creative projects — we’re all engaged in it these days, if only by neglect.  To help people become more purposeful about the organization and preservation of their digital lives, Scott Witmer, digital preservation… Read More »

Patient rounds: Ages-old care & learning concept gets technology upgrade, international collaboration

By | December 24, 2020
0 Comment
African american man in scrubs taking notes and looking at computer screen

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, clinical rotations were halted for medical students, which meant they could not participate in patient rounds—those bedside consultations with seasoned medical staff to discuss and learn about a patient’s condition. This led Mark Cohen, a professor of surgery and pharmacology who runs the Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at the Medical School to think… Read More »

Changes coming in 2021 to Zoom for Health

By | December 23, 2020
0 Comment
A woman wearing headphones uses a laptop computer with an open book beside her.

U-M Zoom has been approved for PHI (HIPAA data). As a result, Zoom for Health at U-M will be consolidated into regular U-M Zoom January 2–3, 2021. New features Thanks to collaborative efforts of U-M and Zoom, users will be able to use expanded features, such as: Cloud recording Live transcription Viewing identifying information in reports Ability to… Read More »

Lessons in architecture: 3-D without leaving the classroom (or living room)

By | December 22, 2020
0 Comment
Female student wearing VR headset, large monitor in the background.

When architecture professor Jonathan Rule wanted his students to see firsthand the way various building materials came together, he had to find a construction site near campus and arrange for the class to walk through. Finding a suitable project isn’t always feasible, not to mention the logistics and liability involved. So with assistance over the past year from… Read More »

XR Initiative at 1: Milestones met as pandemic brings new challenges, opportunities

By | December 22, 2020
0 Comment
" "

When leaders at the Center for Academic Innovation announced an XR initiative a little more than a year ago, they knew there was a hunger from a growing segment of campus to advance teaching through the development of augmented and virtual reality technologies. They couldn’t have anticipated, however, that a global pandemic would so disrupt education that faculty… Read More »

Watch: Lessons learned from quick pivots to online education

By | December 21, 2020
0 Comment
engineering via zoom

The winter term that begins in January will be the third term in a row that instructor David Chesney’s unique software design course will be online, and he has learned from each iteration.  For the past decade, the U-M electrical engineering and computer science lecturer has taught Software for Accessibility, a class he designed in which  undergraduate students… Read More »

HoloLens2 for Nursing: ‘Hands-on’ learning during pandemic and beyond

By | December 21, 2020
0 Comment
" "

The U-M School of Nursing has one of the most technologically advanced programs around with its Clinical Learning Center, yet leadership in the school wrestled with how to teach hundreds of students the hands-on nursing skills and procedures required to advance in the program, while following COVID-19 guidelines for social distancing and university calls to minimize in-person courses.… Read More »

Founded by CoE alum, SambaNova announces AI-accelerated HPC system

By | December 18, 2020
0 Comment
Kunle Olukotun and SambaNova logo

As artificial intelligence applications grow and multiply, researchers have been racing to design a new generation of hardware that meets the unique computational needs of those applications. The market for these “AI chips” is booming, and a key player in this new space is Palo Alto based SambaNova Systems. SambaNova, now a unicorn valued at over $2.5 billion,… Read More »

New how-to resources and data offerings on Precision Health Analytics Platform

By | December 17, 2020
0 Comment
crowd of people with points & intersecting lines overlay

Researchers across campus can now directly query, via SQL server, a de-identified version of the Research Data Warehouse, which includes all 4 million unique Michigan Medicine patients. Learn how to leverage this resource and more Precision Health resources through our updated documentation site (accessible with a Level 1 UMICH login) and video demos and how-to’s. Precision Health has expanded its offerings… Read More »

Extended reality: U-M online courses make XR accessible to everyone

By | December 15, 2020
0 Comment
female student wearing VR headset using hand conrollers, monitor in background

A new three-course online specialization on extended reality developed by Michael Nebeling, an assistant professor with both the School of Information and the College of Engineering, and a team at the U-M Center for Academic Innovation has something for everyone—from novices to the most advanced users, designers, and developers. Extended reality, or XR, is the term for technology… Read More »

Season’s Greeting from ITS!

By | December 14, 2020
0 Comment
Happy Holidays from ITS

As we close out 2020, Information and Technology Services would like to thank our Michigan IT colleagues, faculty, staff, and students for their flexibility and willingness to adapt to so many changes this year. Happy holidays and best wishes for the winter term! Visit the ITS website for IT resources to make 2021 a successful new year.

Research reproducibility in data science and the role of IT staff

By | December 8, 2020
0 Comment
two men looking at a computer screen

A significant challenge facing a wide variety of disciplines is the ability to reproduce research results. Researchers across U-M are working together to develop best practices that promote reproducible data science, and Michigan IT staff play an important role in this effort. “Many IT staff members don’t normally get involved directly in specific research projects, so the reproducibility… Read More »

After five years, Let’s Encrypt, a non-profit based on tech developed at Michigan, has helped to secure the internet

By | December 4, 2020
0 Comment
screens of monitor & smarphone with lock graphic, circle arrows between them

Just five years ago, most websites relied on unencrypted HTTP, the aging and inherently insecure protocol that provides no protection to sites or visitors from threats that range from surveillance through phishing and identity theft. Today, the internet is a much more secure place, with over 80% of websites protected by HTTPS secure encryption. That dramatic transformation –… Read More »

Algorithm & Blues: Machine-aided personnel decisions aim for fairness, risk side effects

By | December 3, 2020
0 Comment
womans face superimposed over screen of computer code

When it comes to making human resources decisions, can humans be fair? What about relying on algorithms to make decisions instead? The answer to the first question is not always, which leads some business leaders to pursue the second. Yet, it turns out decisions made by machines are perceived as even less fair than those made by humans.… Read More »

Cybersecurity experts discuss election, research security

By | December 3, 2020
0 Comment
Ravi Pendse and Javed Ali on Zoom call.

Almost a month after Election Day, experts discussed the threats to election security and cybersecurity and its role within the University of Michigan community in the second installment of the Trotter Distinguished Leadership Series.  Javed Ali, former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, discussed the connections between technology and election security. Ali said the shift towards paper… Read More »

IBM fired U-M professor Lynn Conway for coming out as trans in 1968. 52 years later, the company apologized

By | December 2, 2020
0 Comment
" "

At a public event celebrating LGBTQ+ inclusion, the International Business Machines Corporation presented Lynn Conway, professor emerita of electrical engineering and computer science, with a rare lifetime achievement award. The award accompanied IBM’s apology to Conway, which came 52 years after the company fired her for coming out as transgender.  In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Conway… Read More »

Major side-channel discovery wins NSA contest

By | December 2, 2020
0 Comment
Spectre ghost image over code in background

The National Security Agency recently recognized a major breakthrough in the field of side-channel attacks as the winner of the 2020 Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper competition. Daniel Genkin, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, worked on the paper with collaborators from around the world. The winning paper, describing an exploit called Spectre, broke open a new… Read More »

Conversational assistants could be used to improve African American health around COVID-19

By | December 1, 2020
0 Comment
hand holding mobile phone with medical graphic

U-M researchers say employing a conversational assistant could be one way to narrow the gap in health disparities impacting the African American community, particularly around the current COVID-19 pandemic. Lionel Robert, associate professor at the School of Information and senior author of a study in the journal Digital Government: Research & Practice, says a technological solution could keep… Read More »